


Terminal Howl

by J_Shute_Norway



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: (and I think better), Competition short version on fan-fic, Done for a competition, Gen, Halloween, Halloween story, Horror, Psychological Horror, This is the long version, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 21:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16292189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Shute_Norway/pseuds/J_Shute_Norway
Summary: Have you ever heard what happens to those who destroy a wolf pack? It's supposed to be a myth... (But so was predators going savage).A scary story for Halloween.





	Terminal Howl

**Author's Note:**

> This was done for a competition. Word limit was 2,500, and I wrote the story then cut it down. This is the uncut long version. Competition version over on Fan-Fic.

**Terminal Howl**

_._

* * *

 

_._

_“Carrots, ever heard the legend? What happens to mammals who destroy wolf packs?”_

_“What…! The terminal howl? Nick…? Where did that come from?”_

_“I….. -I don’t know.”_

_“Urghhh. It’s just a dumb ghost story. Just switch the blueberries and lets go!”_

.

.

* * *

 

.

.

It was three weeks after the incident with ex-officer Hopps and her fox that she first heard the howl.

Tired, worn, looking forwards to the rest the night would bring, Dawn had been pulled back to her desk by the pressures of her work. Forms to fill in, decisions to make, policy choices to justify and speeches to write. It was a mirthful realisation that Lionheart throwing so much work onto her wasn’t entirely unreasonable, given the huge volume that she had to face with.

Still, at the very least he could have been nice, couldn’t he?

A please, a thankyou, a sorry.

It was speeches that had most alarmed her. She used to think that he was lazy, taking so much time to contemplate the words being said.

Pedantic, talking about how the rise and flow would go.

In a sense, she’d even considered him arrogant. So self-important that he honestly believed that the mammals under him would see all that hidden symbolism or be more approving of verses in iambic pentameter. Either that or it was an infliction cast upon all P-P-E grads.

But given that the nature of what she was doing, and the covert fashion she was doing it in, she couldn’t export her writing to writers and thus had to handle it herself. In doing so, the chance to guide her citizens into accepting her plans with the spoken word had been too vital to miss.

Sure, she had her collaborators who helped, but tweaking a paragraph here or building a narrative there, all while getting over the ever-present block, took a lot longer than one would imagine.

She smiled darkly.

Must have taken him a lot longer, given all the issues she was throwing up for him. Speaking of which…

A hoof out, and the phone came up to her ear.

A burner phone, naturally.

A number she knew by instinct was entered, a connection made, and a question spoken out.

“How is my puppy in the window?”

“The one with a pea-sized brain?” Dawn replied back. A mirthful chuckle was entertained on the other side, a pause in thought, before a voice was spoken out.

“I’ve tried my best, but it would create too much attention to keep him behind bars much longer,” he said, speaking out grimly.

Dawn’s brow furrowed. “He abducted fourteen mammals, surely the people won’t mind…”

“Some are,” he responded. “With the damage coming in from the most recent savage attacks, along with the reports of lynch mobs against predators, many of those savages in waiting are speaking for him. They’d have been happier if he’d have kept things quiet and safe until his team found the cure, and with some of the things he and some supporters are now saying…”

Dawn nodded darkly. He’d begun talking about the chance of it being contaminated bugmeat or something, and in their fear the preds had latched onto it. “We need to disprove him or discredit him. Keep them fearing and fearing, until they jump in joy at our segregation and safety collar laws.”

“One once it’s too late we have a little ‘accident’. A system bug or such,” came the sickly gleeful response.

Dawn silently looked away, slowly gripping her leg in response. She wondered if the hippo on the other end knew that, originally, it was going to be large mammals like him that she’d target. It was only after Doug had contacted her with his little concoction that she’d shifted her targets. At the end of the day a scapegoat was a scapegoat, and power was power. It was worth it to gain, even if it meant dealing with genocidal head prosecutors.

“…Dawn?”

“-AH,” she muttered, quickly remembering the course of the conversation. She glanced out behind her, over the city, before facing forwards again. “Could I get Doug to,” she began, a quick double whistle following and making her intentions clear. “It worked so well for that damn honey badger.”

“While I took glee in the irony of that affair,” he said, remembering how she’d finally been given her wish of returning to the labs, only to be used to annihilate most of the research and some of the team. “It would raise a suspicion, would it not?”

“A hitmammal, maybe?” Dawn offered.

“Alas,” he sighed, “tonight is the night that we deal with those wolf mobs.”

‘ _Drat_ ,’ she thought. Made up of the crew that Lionheart had hired at cliffside, they’d been shown defending predator communities from the riots that her savage fox incident caused. The media, spotting them holding the line, had hailed them as heroes while the security they provided was entirely counterproductive to the master plan. A hit and run on them by a cement truck however. “When is that?”

…

“Kurt?”

She heard some mumbling and echoes from the other end, and wondere... “–AAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…………………………………………………………….”

She jumped back screaming, a deafening howl raging out of the phone. Thrown onto the floor, she stumbled back up, covering her ears as she approached it. The little item shook and jittered on the ground, vibrating as its speakers tore themselves apart. Still, it went on. Continuous, painful, mournful and anguished. Every so often there was a faint waver, it getting slightly quieter, before carrying on.

She raced over to her real phone and slammed down the security button.

“-We may have a wolf attacking Mr Wassermaim,” she shouted out, panting. The howling still carried on, and it seems to burrow beneath her skin like maggots, cutting and devouring her as the spread around. Flashes of pain went through her mind, and she felt dizzy and sick, tumbling to the ground not far from the phone. She looked at it and began crawling forwards, painfully and slowly as if she were caught in a burning sandstorm. Her hoof reached out to clutch it and silence it, but as if it were white hot she couldn’t. There was no pain but there might as well have been, her arm flinching back as it tried to clutch it.

The howl trailed off, transitioning straight into a croak that turned her inside in and out. It sounded like someone’s larynx was being grated, and she gagged as it continued, curling and cutting in on itself.

It ended, trailing off into nothing, but she still couldn’t bare to look or touch at the phone.

She only rose up when the security team burst into her office.

.

.

* * *

 

.

.

“Ma’am,” the chief of police asked. “Are you sure you…”

“-I must,” she responded, breathing in and out. She would be expected to, and seeing this would help fuel her further. Her speeches, her emotions, projecting out to a fearful people what it was like to see the aftermath of a true savage.

They opened the door and she stopped.

There he was.

He’d collapsed forwards, cracking his heavy desk in two, and lay twisted in the ground as if he were some child’s plaything. Not broken up or with bones snapped, but with his joints pulled into shapes that expressed the pain and agony of his last moments. His arms lay still, still clutching his thinly parted mouth, while his eyes were open.

Open and aghast and red, the fear and terror still in them. They lay inside his unnaturally purple tinged head.

The room was a shower of wooden debris, and papers and knickknacks that had been tossed about. The floor behind him was torn up, the carpet peeled away and a foot even managing to punch through the softwood beneath.

But, though he was a horror to behold, all twisted up and wretched with agony, there was no blood.

Not a single drop.

“How…” she gasped. “How… -How did a wolf do this? How did they strangle a hippo?”

“Are you sure it was a wolf,” he asked, kneeling down to place one of his large arms around her.

“He howled. He howled a most dreadful howl and…” she paused, a sudden shiver of fear going through her. “If there was one voice in the world that that howl sounded like, it was…” She paused, shaking her head. ‘- _No. That’s a dumb myth!’_

“-This must be hard on you,” the chief said, glumly. “First seeing poor Judy die… -and now…”

She breathed in and out, before nodding her head. “I’m… -I’m okay.”

“As am I,” Bogo said. “We need to be, for our city and its people.”

“For the citizens of Zootopia.”

He stood up and steadied himself, and looking up at his she could see the exhaustion, mental and physical, on his face. “If you could, could you keep the wolf thing quiet for now?” he asked. “Last night, some monster drove a truck through a dozen wolves who were protecting pred neighbourhoods. An entire pack… wiped out.”

“Understood,” Bellwether replied, certainly not lying.

“You can feel the grief in all of my canine officers,” he commented, shaking his head. “That’s put the preds really on edge, and a prey mob getting a hold of the news that a wolf may have done this… With those protectors gone and the force overstretched as it is, -I don’t think you need me to put two and two together.”

“No,” she replied, before making her way out. Maths was always a strong subject for her. As was politics. As was journalism, and the concept of a leak.

She didn’t hear him say _“it’s just a myth…”_

.

.

* * *

 

.

.

Her security team had raced her out of the next press conference when Prey supremacists began marching onto the stage. They wanted blood, and she was playing too nice for them. Out of a back door, into an alley. She noted with a grim smile that they didn’t know who was actually doing the playing. 

The alley was tight, steam pipes and almost dead climbers covering either wall. While the sun was going down outside, it might as well have been night here.

…

“Which way now?” she asked, before pausing.

She looked around and gulped, not one of her team there. “Hello?”

…

“Hello!”

She screamed it out, panting in and out and glancing this way and that. Down the alley she went, everything getting darker. She passed under low passageway between two buildings, squealing as waterlogged, moss-covered ropes suddenly slapped against her. She pushed through, feeling them rake up her cloths and claw at her wool. The tarmac beneath her changed into bare earth, and she picked her way between stones and puddles, before her feet touched hard stone cobbles.

She made her way forwards, slipping and sliding slightly as the loose road surface buckled under her.

The path sharply turned to her left and around it she saw the passageway carry on before her. There was a turning to her right, but she paid it no mind. Down further, and the way she was on turned right once more.

Graffiti was lit by a flickering light that hung above a locked steel door. She saw pictures of a sheep watching on as a fox tore a bunny apart.

She flinched, remembering the screams and the sobs and the tart taste of a blueberry in her mouth. She gagged, shaking her head before carrying on. She’d never felt that way about then before! That was just business!

Another fork in the road, left or right. She chose left. She quickly had to turn left again, before inching her way past a jet of escaping steam. Moving on, and she heard the ominous ticking of a clock above her. She couldn’t see it though, and noticed that a wall rose up above her, a door in the base.

It was open.

She stepped through, her heart pounding.

She entered the tiny courtyard, no windows facing it and no light coming in bar the dying one of this long day, and in front of her she saw a passageway out towards a busy street.

She collapsed slightly, panting and sighing with relief.

One step forwards, then another, before she felt the ice-grip claw clamp around her leg.

…

She couldn’t move.

She couldn’t even formulate the order to move in her head, yet alone send it to her body, let alone accept it to respond.

She couldn’t look around, only feel as filthy claws began making their way up her, exploring.

Each touch was like a pinprick with an ice needle.

She felt them go, before her head-poof was ruffled up, a claw gripping it and letting go again and again…

“Like cotton candy?” came a cackling old voice.

Dawn felt queasy, both from it and what she said. How did she…

“I know a lot of things,” she noted, and Dawn turned around to see an ancient looking wolf bitch lying underneath a pile of filthy rags. Only her face showed, and even that was bedraggled and patchy, but the eyes… they were alive. “Old wolfie like me…” she laughed a little, before shaking her head.

Dawn let out a nervous laugh. “Right you are,” she smiled, glancing back at the way out.

“-Ever heard the legend of the terminal howl?”

…

“No…” Dawn muttered, before turning to make her way out.

“A curse… A curse on those that dare destroy a wolfpack whole,” she mumbled. “They will howl no more, but you will girl! You will! Howl your last breath, until there’s nothing left!”

Dawn raced away, plunging into the light and away from the cackles that filled the air. Hoof’s on knees, she panted to regain her breath, before spotting some of her team up ahead. She trotted off to meet them, but as she did so she realised something.

She didn’t remember seeing her when she entered that courtyard.

.

.

* * *

 

.

.

Months past, and the plan went on like usual. Fear grew, rage grew, and many ideas cropped up from others that she liked. That she more than liked. So, today, she stood up on stage an announced the latest.

“Every day, we citizens live in fear,” she began. “Fear that a former citizen will tear us apart. Fear that our neighbours will gain this affliction. Fear that this day might be our last. Together, we have seen predator and prey separated, to keep us safe. But this doesn’t help to address many of the issues, does it?”

There was a faint murmur, before she carried on.

“It is not just biology at the root of this, but culture as well. Foxes are taught to be criminals. Lions are taught that they are meant to rule. Wolves are taught that they belong in glorified mobs, and that they must spread noise pollution in the form of an old hunting call.” She smiled, as pictures of happy pred children came up on the screen behind her. “These little innocents will be turned bad by their parents, and we’ve let this go on for far too long. As a result, today I am proud to announce the new perspective schooling system. Taken away from bad influences, all pred children will learn proper and polite behaviour, and have the savagery taught out of them. Education, integration, and a better solution for us all.”

She backed down as the applause came, and wandered off smiling. They weren’t originally her idea, but in her increasing enjoyment of the new order she’d become their main architect. Two old jails had been converted, their locks and bars getting new use. The chain, shackles, muzzles, cells and black and white uniform would help signify to these little five year olds their place in the world. Without seeing their parents for the next thirteen years, prey teachers would tell them. There were paddles for when they smiled and showed their teeth, pepper spray for when they tried to preen themselves with their tongue, the cane for whenever they acted out…… and a remote shock collar, that would pick up their howls and painfully train them away from it.

If anything, by the end it had been a game, seeing how far she could get with it. Now, the first busses were coming, kids torn away from their families being sent to a place that would rewrite their culture.

It was good.

She entered her dressing room and turned to close the door. But as she turned again her eyes widened.

She was in an alley.

“I could have sworn it was,” she mumbled, turning to open the door.

It had locked behind her.

She turned forwards before squealing as something cold and horrible hit her. She rushed through it, flinching as many others began lashing her. She fought about and stumbled backwards, leaving them behind.

She felt something on her ear.

She pulled it off, and in what little light there was she saw that it was a sodden piece or rope, covered in slimy moss.

That wasn’t right.

She looked up to see a black sky above her. She’d just given her speech for the afternoon news.

Turning forwards, she began running. A whole net of horrible ropes slashed at her, slapping and dragging through her wool and fur, sending her arms batting to clear it off. Carrying on, she screamed as her hoof hit a sharp rock and she stumbled into a puddle, the ice water kicked up and lashing at her lower body. The road surface was unpaved, and she stumbled along it before her hoofs hit solid ground again.

They immediately slipped, a cobble going loose.

She felt herself fall and crash on the ground, her glasses flying off and shattering.

She didn’t try and find them, instead racing on.

There was a sharp corner to her left and she went around it, freezing in horror as she saw a passageway carry on in front of her, a second branching off to her right.

“No…” she gasped. “That’s impossible…!”

It was. Wrong time. Wrong side of town. She turned right, not wanting to go down the way she went before.

The new alley turned right, and she froze as she turned to corner. A flickering light, that then burned a satanic red.

Graffiti on the wall.

The fox killing the bunny again, but he was a puppet. Looking up, she saw the strings lead up to…

“-No,” she gasped, turning and racing from her painted visage. She felt herself gag as the sickly taste of blueberries in her mouth became overbearing, and the threw up as it became a horrible coppery.

Blood…

Looking up from the red puddle she made, she saw herself at a fork in a road. Her head was beginning to hurt, and in defiance at the choice given she turned back the way she came.

Back towards the graffiti…

She felt herself get blasted to the side by a jet of scalding steam, and she tumbled painfully to the floor.

There was a ticking.

Thousands of ticks from hundreds of invisible clocks, and looking up she saw a wall rising up in front of her. An unlocked door inset.

“NO!” she wailed, crying. She didn’t move, and as she began to pull herself together she resolved not to.

She wouldn’t play this game!

.

…

The clocks all went off. Alarms and chimes and beeps, like something off of a pig Floyd song, and the door opened.

She felt herself get up and walk to it, even as she screamed at her body to not do it.

Into the courtyard, and she looked around. No crone! Glancing forwards, she could see the outside and raced for it, her body suddenly under her control again.

.

A corpse cold grip clamped around her leg and she froze in place.

…

Icy claws began probing around her ruined fur and clothes, and she cried in pain as sharp teeth dug into her shoulder and tore off a chunk.

She could only sob, her body stuck like a statue, as she felt a muzzle up against her ear…

.

.

“Awwoooooooooo…….”

The tiny howl rang out, and Dawn bellowed a great one in response. Head tilted to the sky, she let out the mournful cry as she began to go dizzy and her lungs and throat burned.

And whatever she did or tried to do…

She couldn’t stop.


End file.
